


With a Flower

by rin-amazing (gabschle)



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms, Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: AU, Canon Divergence, Death Note AU, Flowers, Flowers on Body, I did some serious research into flowers for this, Language of Flowers, Light is so smitten, M/M, Third Person Limited, third person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-07
Updated: 2017-12-07
Packaged: 2019-02-11 14:20:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12937101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabschle/pseuds/rin-amazing
Summary: Every time Light writes a name in the Death Note, a flower grows on his body.Prompt by NocturneProductions.Written for the Secret Shinigami Gift Exchange on Tumblr for L's Death Day 2017.





	With a Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [NocturneProductions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/NocturneProductions/gifts).



_With a Flower_

_I hide myself within my flower,_  
_That wearing on your breast,_  
_You, unsuspecting, wear me too —_  
_And angels know the rest._

_I hide myself within my flower,_  
_That, fading from your vase,_  
_You, unsuspecting, feel for me_  
_Almost a loneliness._

_\- Emily Dickinson_

* * *

At first, the flowers utterly annoyed him to no end.

He’d picked up the Death Note, gained god-like powers to do with as he wished… and every time he’d wield them, a bud would start growing.

On his body.

If he spread out the time between each name written in the Death Note, the buds were more manageable. He could easily snip them off in the bathroom when it was convenient for him.

However, the more names he’d write in one sitting, the more bothersome the flowers blooming became. He would have to interrupt his sessions of passing judgment more frequently to trim them off. He could not stand to be disturbed while performing such a crucial task for humanity; yet he could not ignore it when they’d poke out from his body, contorting his otherwise chiseled frame.

Writing hundreds of names a day meant the equivalent of dozens of bouquets of newly-formed sprouts having to be discarded every day by Light. He’d take out the trash every morning, before his mother, father, or Sayu arose for the day, surreptitiously adding in his bag of wilted buds before handing it to the garbage collector. It was a kaleidoscopic sight to behold – orange roses and lilies punctuating his otherwise dull-toned trash – but he was always glad to be rid of it.

At least, at first.

While he’s puzzled by the existence of the flowers (and Ryuk is no help to him in discovering the reason behind it), after a while he grows fond of them. He had joked to Ryuk that he’d much prefer wings to flowers; but as Ryuk said, it was easier to hide flowers than wings, and certainly wings would get him caught faster.

So he cherished the flowers, or at least as much as he could when he could not afford to arouse the suspicion of anyone, let alone the police. He continued his routine of snipping them all off meticulously, several times a day, save for one orange lily that he nursed within the curve of his left hip. Once it grew large enough to poke out from underneath his clothes, he would be forced to cut it off; but it never failed to grow back a bright orange lily bud once he wrote another name in the Death Note.

After all, as he thought of it, the presence of such flora cemented his status as the true God of the New World. He smirked as he turned back to his television to capture more names in the notebook.

* * *

One day, shortly after the world started taking notice of his righteous judgment, Light had turned on the television to continue with his purging of the world’s scum. The local news, however, was interrupted shortly after he started writing names. _A worldwide broadcast from the ICPO?_ Light was instantly intrigued.

But this Lind L. Tailor was quickly aggravating him. _How dare he rebuke my rightful justice I am enacting upon the world! Something only_ I _could ever do!_

As he wrote down the man’s name, he felt giddy with glee and vindictiveness. He couldn’t wait to see this man die before his very eyes.

He couldn’t keep himself from bursting into a laugh when he collapsed on screen. But his laughter was quickly silenced when he saw the Gothic letter “L” on his television and heard the modulated voice.

“I… I had to test this just in case but I-I never thought it would actually happen. Kira… It seems you can kill people without having to be there in person.”

The man’s – no, L’s – voice was breathy, labored – but the glee behind his words rang out clear as a bell. And Light was pinned down by that voice.

His face was heated, as if ablaze. He rose a hand to it, momentarily distracted by the relief he found from his fingertips, cool to the touch. _Surely the air conditioning must have malfunctioned?_

He continued listening to that voice, trying to ignore the pounding of his heart against his rib cage. At any moment, he was convinced he might combust.

Something brushed against his neck, and he gasped – both in shock and in relief to have found a distraction. But when he grabbed at the offending thing, it felt eerily familiar.

As he strode over to the bathroom, L’s words burrowing deep into the center of his chest, the hair on his arms raised. The ends of his fingers tingled as he probed at the bothersome growth on his neck, and when he finally reached the mirror above the sink, his eyes were met with a pure white carnation.

In full bloom.

His mouth fell open. Before today, the flowers that had grown on his body started as sprouts, and usually needed a few days to bloom. But this white carnation had taken all but a few minutes to go from bud to flower.

As his eyes roamed lower, a green vine began snaking out from underneath the collar of his white button-down, white daisies and carnations dotting along its length. They were starting to fill out his shirt with odd outlines.

The colors of the world swam before him, swirling about. He floated as if in a trance back to where his television was. Back to that voice.

The Gothic letter “L” emblazoned upon the screen bolded in his vision, as if he had been staring at the sun too long and it now was etched into his retina.

He couldn’t remember the last time he felt so present, so alive. L’s words washed over him, filling him to the brim with anticipation, uncertainty, passion and fervor that had been strangely absent for most of his life.

He lied down, overcome with emotion, his thoughts spilling out from his head onto every surface of his bed. In the sea of words churning about, one thought occurred to him.

_That voice – L’s voice – accelerated the rate at which the flowers bloomed._

Up until this point, the Death Note was the only material object that was associated with the appearance and growth of the flowers. Light knew that the cause for their presence was from writing names in the Death Note.

But that L’s voice could speed up the growth of the flowers… _Now,_ that _is interesting_.

He smirked as his eyes closed. He would get to the bottom of this and deduce why it was that L could affect the flowers’ blooming.

Because after all, he _is_ the God of the New World, and nothing – absolutely nothing – would escape his notice or understanding.

* * *

Light strode confidently into the exam room, exuding from every pore the poised, yet knowing aura that wove everyone under his spell. He took his seat and waited for the proctor’s further instruction.

When the exam began, Light flipped through the exam book absentmindedly, already knowing based on a cursory glance through the questions that he’d be done in 10 minutes. Suddenly, he heard the proctor clear his throat.

“Young man – sit properly!” he bellowed to someone a few rows behind Light. As Light turned around to glower at the person who had caused the interruption in his train of thought, his skin began to tingle. He locked eyes with the student, who was slouched over slightly and had his knees pressed to his chest.

Light’s heart was racing.

He quickly turned away, not needing the distraction on such a crucial day for his future academic career. But he could feel in the crook of his right elbow a flower stretching the fabric there slightly.

* * *

Light, of course, scored the highest on the college entrance exam in the entire freshman class of To-Oh University. A perfect score, no less – not that he was surprised.

But he _was_ surprised, however, that someone _else_ had also achieved a perfect score on the exam.

And that someone was the student who had gotten into trouble for sitting improperly during the exam.

Light snorted to himself as he walked up the steps to the stage at the To-Oh University entrance ceremony. Of course it would be him.

Light had wondered if being in the same room as him during the exam had caused that flower on his arm to sprout and fully bloom, but he didn’t have enough evidence to say for certain. Yes, only L’s voice had been shown to accelerate the growth of the flowers, but he was loath to believe that that student was L.

The student in question followed closely behind Light, unnerving him a bit. But he maintained his composure. _Soon, I will know for sure if he has the same effect on the flowers as L does_.

* * *

Once Light had finished his speech, the other student began his. And immediately, Light was transported back to the emotional state he was in during his confrontation with L weeks before. And _this_ voice wasn’t modulated.

As the student recited his speech – impressively, with no notes at all, though he held a paper all the same – goosebumps traveled up Light’s body. The flowers around his hips and stomach pressed into his suit, and Light was thankful that on this occasion his suit jacket was thick enough that it would not betray to others the accelerated blooming of the sprouts.

He couldn’t be sure if this was L, or someone affiliated with him, but he could not deny that the student standing before him had the same effect on the flowers – and on him – as L did.

* * *

After a gruelingly long address – or at least in Light’s estimation, since it was spent worrying that the flowers would burst through the seams of his clothes at any point – the other student finished, and Light led them off the stage to their seats.

He spoke to Light as they approached their seats, but Light barely gave it any thought – he was torn between saying anything to keep him talking, to continue to drown in the maelstrom of strong emotions, and leaving immediately to trim off the flowers that had no doubt begun to overgrow along his torso.

Finally, after being seated, the other student fell silent.

Light took this opportunity to regain his composure and process what had happened. Perhaps this person was affiliated with L, or the Shinigami realm, or both. After all, only the Death Note and L were associated with the flowers growing on his body.

Before long, though, the other student leaned over to speak in his ear.

“Light…” he whispered. His breath was warm against Light’s ear, and it cascaded down to his neck, raising the hairs on his arms.

“I wanted to tell you that I am L.”

It took all of Light’s strength to keep his mouth from hanging agape.

On the one hand, he reasoned, it would make sense that this would be L. After all, only L (along with the Death Note) had been shown to have an effect on the flowers.

On the other hand, though… this man before him ( _Is he even a student?_ Light wonders) could have any number of motives to call himself L. He could simply be affiliated with L or the Shinigami realm (or both).

And yet…

Light decided to proceed with the assumption that this was L. It would keep him in the mindset of covering his tracks as Kira. And this way, whether he was L or not, he could covertly analyze what L – or someone working for him – is truly like, which could only help him in the long run.

And truthfully, Light mused, being around him more would help him uncover why it was that he had an effect on the flowers that sprouted on his body. He couldn’t get past how someone _not_ tied to anything supernatural would be able to accelerate the growth of the flowers, and as the God of the New World, he needed to know everything that transpired and the reason behind it.

He turned back to L, determined to deduce everything he could about the detective.

* * *

L sat across from Light at the coffee shop, a mischievous glint in his eye that Light couldn’t quite unwrap. Light knew his deductive reasoning skills were being put to the test, but for the life of him, he couldn’t deduce what L had up his sleeve. _Best to be cautious_.

L passed to Light some photos that he wanted Light to analyze. As he did so, Light reached out for them, and his fingertips grazed against L’s.

With no warning, Light’s eyes widened, his heart broke into a gallop, and his chest was soon peppered with sprouts and newly-formed buds. He was confident his shirt would conceal them, but the waves of arousal and adrenaline seized him.

He no longer felt in control of his basic impulses.

Light abruptly got up from the booth and headed to the restroom. He caught L openly staring at him as he did so, but he no longer cared.

_What kind of god can I be if I cannot handle_ this _?_

He entered the bathroom and, finding the first stall, shut and locked the stall door behind him. He fished for his scissors in his pocket, and, after unbuttoning his shirt, started snipping erratically at the vines that had grown along his chest. The daisies and carnations that typically grew in white when he was around L were now blue, orange, and red roses. He couldn’t comprehend the sudden change, and couldn’t shake the feeling of being adrift. So he instead focused on cutting off the flowers as quickly as he could.

So focused was he on the task that the sudden pounding on the stall door caused him to jump.

“Light?” he heard L ask through the door. Light turned, and saw L’s bare feet outside the door. _How had he snuck in without my hearing him_?

“Are you alright?” L asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Light said. He wasn’t sure how much L heard, but he was certain L had overheard at least one snip.

“You’ve been in there a while,” L mused. Light almost audibly groaned.

“I’m almost done. I’m sorry for the wait,” he said, not feeling the least bit sorry. He didn’t know what L was playing at, but he was quickly growing tired of his tiptoeing around the obvious.

L sighed, as if defeated, before he spoke again.

“What are you cutting, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Light was armed with his answer. He steeled himself with a quick breath before answering. “The tags on my clothes are bothering me, so I’ve been cutting them off. Just as you sitting normally decreases your deductive reasoning skills by 40%, tags on my clothes affect me in just the same way.”

It was a horrible lie, but he had hoped that L would empathize with any measures that needed to be taken to maintain his degree of deductive reasoning.

“Hmm.” L shifted his body weight between his feet, as if in contemplation. “There must be an awful lot of tags on your clothing then – you’ve been cutting them off for the last 5 minutes.”

_How had he snuck in without notice?_ Light was too panicked to ponder that thought much further.

He was trapped. L had cornered him, literally and figuratively, and he had no reasonable explanation for why he would’ve been in the stall so long, with the sound of the scissors shearing the sole evidence of what he had been doing in there.

Light was exhausted. In his usual frame of mind, he would’ve come up with a more believable lie, or better yet, had thought of a contingency plan in advance should this have transpired. _Damn these flowers!_

As he pondered further on what to do, the hopelessness of the situation dawned on him. If something as simple as some flowers – and, he admitted disdainfully to himself, the presence of a person – could intellectually derail him so easily, was he truly as capable as he thought he was of becoming the God of the New World?

His plans of purging the world of immoral scum fell to the wayside as he surrendered, fully and completely, to his true destiny.

Without bothering to button up his shirt, or to conceal the scissors or the flowers along his chest and torso, he unlocked and swung open the stall door.

L, to his credit, looked visibly shocked, and stepped back.

L’s eyes, wide with something akin to awe, skimmed down Light’s torso and across his bare chest. His head turned to the side as he scrutinized the vines, heavy with red carnations and tulips.

Light’s vision swam before him, and was fearful that he might faint. He wasn’t sure what reaction he wanted – or expected – from L, but he privately basked in the attention L’s probing eyes were giving him.

Light boldly took a step forward, seeing L’s curiosity in his eyes. Perhaps he wanted a closer look. Light was certain the detective in him would be unable to resist trying to unravel the mystery behind these flowers on his body.

L stepped towards him as well, putting him inches from touching Light. He reached out with his fingertips towards Light, and gingerly touched a tulip that was growing just below his sternum. The tulip’s petals grew out further under his touch, and deepened in color to a dark violet.

When L smiled at this, his eyes crinkling, Light couldn’t resist running a finger along L’s jawline.

“Was that you who tricked Kira into killing Lind L. Tailor?” He wanted to confirm that had in fact been L’s voice.

L knew without being prompted what the real question was. “Yes. It was always me,” he said, his eyes scanning up from the tulip to look into Light’s.

Light smirked. “Yes, it always was,” he agreed, and L’s eyes flashed in understanding.

To Light’s surprise, L lowered his head to Light’s collarbone and began pressing light kisses into the skin. “You know,” he said between kisses, “when your household was under surveillance, I was tasked with surveilling you.”

“Oh?” Light breathed. Thought had escaped him once L had started lathering him with affection.

“And while I conducted the surveillance with the intent of catching Kira red-handed,” he continued, “I can’t deny that I began to enjoy the sight of you in… _more_ than an investigative fashion.”

Light moaned as L nibbled at the juncture between his neck and shoulders.

“Particularly,” L said, “when you would undress.” He took hold of Light’s hips and massaged them gently, coaxing delighted sighs from him.

When L raised his head, satisfied by his ministrations, Light was pinned in place by his gaze.

L tilted his head forward slightly, his forehead meeting Light’s. His eyes closed and he breathed in deeply. Light marveled at the sight of his companion looking so at ease.

Light closed his eyes for a moment before drawing back and meeting L’s look of mild surprise.

Then, he leaned forward, and pulled L into a kiss.

It was a searing kiss, and consumed Light’s body in white-hot heat. L’s hands roamed over Light’s chest and abdomen, hungrily seeking out areas that made Light whimper with need.

As red roses blossomed all over where L touched him, Light came to a realization.

Perhaps he didn’t have to strive for anything – perfection, god-like status, never being bored – but could just _be_.

He could just _be_ , and be with L.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks a bunch to nocturneproductions for the amazing prompt! It brought out the best fiction writing I've ever done. She's a great writer - I highly recommend checking out her stories here on AO3, as well as her tumblr, nocturneproductions.tumblr.com.
> 
> I'm also on Tumblr at rin-amazing.tumblr.com - I post a loooot of Death Note there! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I'd love to hear what you thought of this :)


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